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The accused before the trial began – now he has been convicted
Photo: Philipp Schulze / picture alliance / dpa
A 35-year-old man has been sentenced to life in prison with preventive detention for the murder of his girlfriend and her four- and 11-year-old children.
The Lüneburg regional court also determined on Tuesday that the guilt was particularly serious.
This means that early release from prison after 15 years is legally possible, but in practice it is almost impossible.
With the verdict, the court complied with the request of the public prosecutor.
The defender of Bremen only questioned the preventive detention.
The accused remained silent during the trial.
The verdict is not yet legally binding.
The perpetrator had been noticed earlier by strangling
Before the verdict was announced, a psychiatric expert had shown that the accused had grown up in a broken family.
The accused had been prone to violence since childhood and had repeatedly attracted attention by being strangled.
At the age of 15 he was sent to the penitentiary for twelve years.
The man committed the crime in May 2020 in Bispingen, Lower Saxony.
He had first strangled his 35-year-old partner "in order to be sexually aroused," according to prosecutors.
He then strangled his partner's four-year-old son.
He then raped the woman's eleven-year-old daughter and strangled her as well.
He then laid the child's body on a forest path near the site.
He left the bodies of his partner and their young son in the apartment, where they were found shortly afterwards.
The daughter's body was not discovered until two days later by a forester.
The man came under suspicion immediately after the crime and was arrested.
He wasn't the children's father.
The two fathers and the grandmother appeared as joint plaintiffs.
File number: Az. 27 Ks 11/21
has/dpa